Our vacation (part one)

I know some of you are waiting with bated breath (hardly) for details about our recent trip to Ohio and Kentucky. I don't have the patience right now to upload our photos, I might do that and tweak the posts in the coming days, but right now we're trying to THINK about packing and that takes precedence. :)

Anyways, we left for Ohio on July 28th. We stopped in Erie, PA for lunch and a much needed walk. As we got off the interstate and travelled into Erie, Josh and I were struck by how depressed the city was and that a lot of the businesses were boarded up. There was one priceless sign that I really wanted to take a picture of, but Josh didn't really want to stop the car and get out. It was a fortune teller who had gone out of business...I guess she couldn't foresee HER future. ;)

After lunch we drove into Cleveland and went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I have to say, we were rather disappointed with the place. It WAS interesting to see the rock artifacts, however, we didn't realize that they ONLY had items of bands who were inducted. So we were stupidly looking around for the KISS exhibit, but couldn't find it.

I was a little surprised at how seriously they took security. Yes, they have priceless items from individuals and bands, but I think they went a bit overboard. There was a teenager who took a picture of some memorabilia. Apparently they have motion sensors that pick up on camera flashes, anyways, this kid took the picture and out came a guard to talk to him. I figured they would just let him off with a warning and let him go. That would be too easy...and kind-hearted.

All of a sudden this guard gets on her walkie-talkie and yells, "We have a Code 9! I repeat, we have a Code 9!" She promptly looked at his camera, made him erase the photo(s) he took and threw him out. Nice, wasn't she?

After the Hall of Fame, we decided to get into the car and head into one of the suburbs, have dinner and get some sleep. Since there wasn't anywhere really nice where we were, we stopped in at an Olive Garden and had a bite to eat. Well, that was a mistake. The food was ok but the service made us cringe. Not only was the waitress rude, but whenever she couldn't hear what we said, she would respond with a long, drawn-out "Whuuuuuuuuuuuuuut?" with a hint of a Southern accent. Most waitresses, one would hope, would ask "pardon me?" or "could you repeat that?", but no matter what we requested, she would respond the same way. We wanted more napkins..."Whuuuuuuuuuuuuuut?" We wanted more water..."Whuuuuuuuuuut?" After a while we couldn't help but laugh. ;)

We finally got to the hotel and got a good night's rest as we were going to head into Kentucky in the morning...that was an experience. ;)